As the bedrock of the treaty alliance between Thailand and the United States was outward-oriented against the common external threat of communist expansionism, relations between Bangkok and Washington understandably became adrift after the end of the Cold War. Bilateral ties sunk to an unprecedented low during Thailand's existential economic crisis in 1997-98 but perked up in new realignment in 2003, when Bangkok was designated a US major non-NATO ally (MNNA). Since then, two-way relations have been mired in the vicissitudes and machinations of Thailand's domestic politics and the US' moving balance between foreign policy interests and values. The Thai-US alliance has entered a new phase under the new reign from 2016 whereby Thai national security conception, practice and enforcement have broadened. As internal security to protect and promote Thailand's ruling regime becomes paramount, the "securitization" of Thai foreign relations is likely to determine Thailand's dealings abroad indefinitely.
Presenter:
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is Professor and Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. He earned his PhD from the London School of Economics where his dissertation was awarded the UK’s Best Dissertation Prize. Thitinan has held visiting positions at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Stanford University, Yangon University, and Victoria University in New Zealand. His wide-ranging publications include “Democracy and Monarchy in Thailand: Reconciliation or Reckoning?” in SAIS Review (2020) and more than 1,000 op-eds in mass media such as The Bangkok Post, The Straits times, Nikkei Asian Review, and Project Syndicate. His sought-after views have appeared widely in local and international media. In 2015, he was awarded a prize for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia, and was later appointed ASEAN@50 Fellow by New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade and Australia-ASEAN Fellow by the Lowy Institute.
Discussant:
Benjamin Zawaki has been a senior program specialist at The Asia Foundation since March 2020, following several years in a consultancy role. He helps manage programs on regional maritime and cyber security, ASEAN, the Mekong River, and the US-Thailand relationship. Zawacki is the author of Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China (Zed Books, October 2017), which was translated into Chinese and whose second edition via Bloomsbury Books is forthcoming in 2021. He was a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School in 2014-2015 and a term member on the Council on Foreign Relations through 2016. He served as a policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter and two other “elders” in Myanmar in 2013, and was Amnesty International’s Southeast Asia researcher for five years through 2012. He has also worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Commission of Jurists.
Moderator:
Ann Marie Murphy is a Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, and 2019-2010 ASEAN Research Program Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Murphy’s research interests include international relations and comparative politics in Southeast Asia, U.S. foreign policy toward Asia, and governance of non-traditional security issues. Dr. Murphy is a founding partner of the New York Southeast Asia Network and is currently completing a book on the impact of democracy on Indonesian foreign policy with the generous support of the Smith Richardson Foundation.
This event is part of the Southeast Asia Views America: Perceptions, Policies & Prospects virtual conference.
This event is sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, APEC Study Center at Columbia University, and the New York Southeast Asia Network.
Disclosures:
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